


volkihar's curse.

by foundCarcosa



Series: Dragonborn Age [2]
Category: Dragon Age II, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The adventures of one Dragonborn and his unlikely companion continue; a trip to a castle shrouded in fog leads to a condition the gravity of which Red Drustan hadn't accounted for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	volkihar's curse.

"This isn't a good idea," Fenris states as soon as Castle Volkihar looms into view, shrouded in mist and darker than sin.

Drustan snorts, wincing at the effort that took -- his stomach is still roiling, unaccustomed to the lurching of the ship. He is draped unceremoniously on the deck, propped against a stack of flimsy wooden crates. "You don't say? Neither was eating just before leaving harbour."

The Dunmer glances back at him without much sympathy. "You have travelled much and you still don't know that?"

"Ha, ha." Drustan hasn't the energy for a stronger retort.  
He chances a glance upward, squinting against the rising wind. Castle Volkihar perches on an island not much bigger than it, a jut of rock rising from the boundless sea. The woman they'd come to deliver is still nestled in a borrowed blanket behind Drustan, eyes closed, presumably sleeping like the dead.

"She's been trapped down there for Divines-know how long, you'd think she'd have gotten her fill of sleep," Drustan mutters as he painstakingly pushes himself to his feet. The ship rocks alarmingly under him and he clutches his stomach with a groan.

"This isn't a good idea," Fenris repeats, stonily.

"Don't fret, my tattooed friend." The Redguard claps him soundly on the shoulder, eliciting an annoyed grunt. "It's just a delivery mission. I'm as eager to get back to the mainland as you are."

The Dunmer shakes his head -- _you trivialise my meaning, mage_ \-- but remains silent until they dock.

\--

The guard stares at Fenris with naked curiosity. Fenris, accustomed to that sort of attention but disliking it all the same, bares his teeth in a sneer. The guard raises his eyebrows and looks away, but lazily, not with the frightened rapidity the Dunmer would have preferred.

This guard has seen things stranger than Fenris, stranger and more horrific. One could not work in a den of vampires and _not_ see such things.  
A den of vampires, into which Drustan has been drawn. Fenris does not doubt his ability to fend for himself, but the Redguard is cocky, lackadaisical. He did not recognise the threat vampires posed.  
Fenris hadn't been allowed in, despite his participation in Serana's safe return. He could only hope that Drustan is as quick as he'd said he'd be.

The wind kicks up again, and Fenris hunches his back against it, pulling the cloak close around his narrow frame. Wispy grey hair flicks into his eyes, obscuring his vision, but his sensitive ears twitch. The wind brings sound with it, not just the shrieking howl of air rushing past, but the more timbrous roar of a man in agony.

The guard's eyes flick towards Fenris quickly, as if surreptitiously checking to see if he'd heard.

"What is going on in there?" the Dunmer asks, stepping deliberately towards the gate. "What are they doing to him?" The guard doesn't quail or stammer, just stares stonily back at him.  
Fenris clamps his hands around the bars of the gate and rattles, snarling. _"Tell me!"_

\--

Drustan is wan and visibly shaken when the guard opens the gate and ushers him out. His hands tremble finely, his garments rumpled as if he'd taken them off at some point and thrown them back on in a hurry. Fenris thinks there should be sweat standing out on his high forehead, as sick as he looks, but his flesh is as dry as the red lands from which he hails.  
All this the Dunmer observes in the seconds it takes for Drustan to approach him, unsteady on his feet, the gate clanging shut behind him. His eyes had been downcast, but now he looks up, right into Fenris' narrowed eyes.

"I didn't want this," he rasps, and his eyes are red. Flickering, lurid red tinged with yellow, campfire flames suspended in an ink-black sea.

Fenris stumbles backward, his back thudding against the low stone wall that frames the walkway.  
"You let them _change_ you?" he whispers incredulously, his expressive mouth twisting in revulsion.

"I didn't want this!" Drustan repeats, and though the volume doesn't change, there is a force behind his voice that _pushes_ the words towards Fenris, that causes gooseflesh to erupt on his arms and raises the fine hair at the nape of his neck.  
"They would have... they would have killed me. They call it 'hunting', sure, I may have gotten away for a little while, but they would have _killed_ me in the end!"  
To Fenris' amazement, there are tears standing in Drustan's new, too-bright eyes.  
"But this is worse! I..." Drustan fixates on Fenris, mouth slack, his fingers curling in as if to form talons. "I _hunger,_ and my blood boils even though it's cloudy, and... ah, Fenris, I..."

"Back to the mainland," Fenris says slowly, as if in a dream, closing his fingers around Drustan's elbow and steering him down to where the ship waited. "Away from here. Far away from here."

\--

Fenris watches Red Drustan become bathed in the colour by which they called him -- mutating into a great taloned beast to rip the life out of men and drain them dry, howling in agony as he transformed back into himself, red eyes blazing to tormented life under the light of the moons and mouth hungry, always hungry.

The man who could cure him is far away, in the northwest, at Morthal. Carriages wouldn't take them, the horses shying away from Drustan's oozing menace, the drivers shaking their heads vigorously and snapping their whip in his direction as if he were a cur.

"Are you stupid?" Drustan shouts at him once, his fingers digging into Fenris' shoulders, his breath still reeking of hot blood and rent flesh. "Go! Get away from me! You have all of Skyrim and yet you follow me like a dumb cur! _Go!"_

 _A dumb cur. The Telvanni lord's little wolf._ Fenris is stony and unresponsive for days afterward, but he does not leave Drustan.  
It is known to both of them that the Redguard wouldn't make it to Morthal alone.

\--

"It is colder," Drustan murmurs, a film over his eyes, his hunger not sharp and hot like it is when it first surfaces, but a constant ache, one that deadens his limbs and makes his senses dull. Fenris, for once, feels stronger than him. Like the caregiver and not the cur. It is a hollow triumph.

"We are past Whiterun," the Dunmer agrees, and nearby, a grackle squawks as if in agreement. "Morthal is not so far."

"I told you to leave," and he sounds vaguely confused, perhaps astounded. His eyes focus on Fenris' face with some effort, but Fenris solemnly continues to watch the road ahead.

"I no longer take orders, mage."

\--

His breathing laboured and his heart stuttering in his concave chest, Drustan stumbles to his knees under the crisp winter sun, and Fenris pulls him off the road and into the shade of the forest, and covers him with his cloak.

Barely feeling the biting cold, he heads into Morthal alone.


End file.
